


I don't know how

by donnarafiki



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, But With A Good Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ficlet, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Mental Illness, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, and tears, lost of hugging, mentions of past childhood abuse (not graphic), short fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 14:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12533284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donnarafiki/pseuds/donnarafiki
Summary: Draco's nightmares are so horrible that he now doesn't sleep at all anymore, instead he lives of pepper up potions, working deep into the night.Until at one point Harry can't take it anymore, and confronts him about it. Turns out they have more in common than they think.





	I don't know how

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the terrible description, I promise it's not that bad

 

Draco's eyes were burning. Not because he was about to cry or anything, but because he was ridiculously tired. He'd been working on his transfiguration essay for over an hour now, and it had already been way past midnight when he started.

He figured that if the nightmares would keep him from sleeping, then tossing and turning in his bed wasn't going to do any good either. That was why his nights were filled with homework, empty bottles of cheap pepper up (he couldn't afford anything else since his father had disinherited him for his failure to capture Harry during the battle of Hogwarts), spell practice and reading these days.

He spent his days fixing the ruined parts of the castle, and he secretly took quite a bit of pride in the sheer amount of rubble he'd fixed. All the teachers combined hadn't fixed as much as he had.

All of this hard work was starting to take its toll on his body though. His hands were shaking near constantly, without glasses he couldn't see shit and he was unable focus for more than half an hour. Other people might think that was still quite a lot, but it wasn't for someone who used to manage seven hour break-less study sessions. The perks of being one of the world’s best occlumences.

"Oh, you're still up." Draco didn't need to look around in order to know who'd just entered the common room.

"Of course I'm still up, Potter. Are you going to ask that every time you see me here in the dead of night?" Draco sighed. He knew he shouldn't bitch to Harry, but he also knew that he'd screwed up his relationship with the man bad enough over the past few years in order to be sure they'd never get along. _He_ might be long over their childhood quarrels, but Harry surely wasn't. Draco had fucked up too many times for that.

"I think I am, yes." Harry replied to Draco's rhetorical question. Idiot. "Maybe then you'll realise how fucked up it is that you don't go to bed at all."

"Like you're such a sleeping beauty." Draco huffed, realising too late that it was a bit of a strange thing to say.

"I won't deny I don't sleep very well either, but at least I try to change that." Harry shot back. "You don't."

"Is this conversation going to lead to anything?" Draco asked as he gave into the temptation of looking around. "Because if it's not I'd like it to stop."

Harry, wearing a pair of hideous orange Chudley Cannons pyjamas, shook his head at his notion. "You know you can't live like this forever, Malfoy."

"But I don't expect to live forever, Potter." Draco shot back dryly. "I'm not immortal."

"But you could live longer if you try and get some sleep."

"I doubt that, I get more death threats than Granger did when the prophet claimed she dumped you." The other man didn't respond to that. Draco sighed and turned back to his work.

"Please leave." He said when he didn't hear Harry go.

"You... you really think you could be murdered?"

"It would not surprise me." Draco answered flatly. Technically that had been a lie, since he didn't expect to live long because of his own hand and not the hands of the people who wrote those awful letters, but he wasn't about to tell Harry that. Instead he turned back to his work and kept reading the same paragraph over and over again. Not one word penetrated the sleep fog in his brain though.

"That's terrible." Harry said, and Draco could just hear how shocked his face must look like.

"Please refrain from putting your hero complex to use on me. I don't appreciate it." And Draco's voice was ice now, because he really did want Harry to back off. It was one thing to know that more than half of wizarding society wanted him dead, it was quite another to have Potter make a fuss about it.

"Why not?"

_Because I don’t want nor deserve to be saved_. Draco thought. But that was not what he said. "It doesn't matter. Just leave me alone."

"Like hell I am." And before Draco knew what was happening Harry sat down next to him and took Draco's chin between his fingers, forcing him to look into his intense green eyes.

"Vat are you doin' Potte?" Draco asked stunned, his speech slurred due to Harry's fingers.

"You have to sleep Malfoy," Harry said in his turn, not answering the question. "Even Hermione wasn't this tired when she was using the time turner to attend extra classes. It's going to do you in otherwise."

"I have no problems with that." Draco replied, after pushing Harry's fingers away. "Why do you care anyway?" He asked then, dropping his head in his hands with a deep sigh, wishing that Harry would leave him the fuck alone. He was afraid his exhaustion would make him say things he'd regret later.

"Because I want to help. Call me stupid for it all you like but we've lost too many people in the war and I'm just not going to sit here and watch you waste your life away despite surviving."

And somehow those words hurt more than the months long silence from before. Like ice spreading through his veins Draco suddenly started to realise that Harry wanted him to try harder at getting his life back together. That he hadn't noticed that that was all Draco had been trying for the past months. That he was just another charity case for the saviour of the wizarding world.

What a prick.

"Then I'll go and sit some _fucking_ place else, Potter, so you can’t watch me anymore." With haste, because he didn't want Harry to see the tears in his eyes and on his cheeks, Draco shoved his stuff in his bag and stormed out of the common room. The loud slam of the door was followed by a clock indicating it was 4 am, and then a whispered _Merlin I fucked this up_.

* * *

  
Draco pressed his back hard against the tiles of myrtle's bathroom. He needed the cold because the lack of sleep caused him to overheat and he wasn't allowed to doze off, which he did too often. He'd drift off for a moment, desperate for some relief for his stinging eyes and exhausted brain and body, and mere seconds later his mind would be filled with the most gruesome horrors of the war. Blood, torture, rape, fear and screams.

Merlin the screams were the worst, piercing through every fiber of his being, splitting his remaining sanity like a sectumsempra to the soul. He couldn't bear them and no occlumence shield could ward them off.

"Draco?" A tentative voice, filled with more concern than Draco had ever heard in it before, spoke softly in the dark. "Are you hanging in there alright?"

He shook his head, letting out a shuddering breath. He couldn't manage speaking just yet, his entire body seemed to have forgotten it's normal ways of functioning. Not that it mattered, he was confident Myrtle was watching him and didn't need a vocal confirmation of his answer. As if it wasn't obvious yet from his teary eyes, trembling limbs and ragged breaths.

"Oh darling." Myrtle floated down into his blurry vision and put a transparent hand on his shoulder. He shuddered in it's coolness. "You know this can't last, right?"

"I don't want it to last." Draco tried to wet his lips but his mouth was completely dry. "But I can't handle the screaming. The endless rewinding of every horrible moment." He forced a large gulp of air into his lungs, refusing to start hyperventilating. Then he directed his eyes upward and held Myrtle in his gaze.

"Do they stop? The memories, do they stop?" *When you die?* He added in his mind, though he didn't think Myrtle hadn't added it herself.

"They fade," Myrtle whispered, her translucent eyes boring somehow solid into his own. "But no faster than a living mind would let them fade. Slower perhaps, because you can ask for help. You can overcome this Draco. Put it behind you."

"I don't know how." Draco mouthed the words, his throat choked up by tears brought on by the newly acquired knowledge that even death wouldn't help him. "I just want it to stop Myrtle. But I don’t know how."

His hands, that had been wiping at the tears on his face before, fell almost lifeless to his side. A panic was clawing at his chest. A dread hanging over him that he'd never again have a good night's rest, a quiet moment, a minute to catch his breath.

The thought numbed him while at the same time it made his every cell scream in horror. He couldn't do this. He didn't want to do this, but most of all he couldn't. He couldn't do it on his own, aided with an overdose of pepper up, and he couldn't ask for help from the people he'd harmed.

How could he ask for the guidance he needed to overcome the trauma's he'd brought upon himself by not having a backbone, by being a disappointing son, a useless heir, a coward?

His arrogant, self-absorbed egoistic self might have done that a few years back, but he was no longer that person. Where he had once strutted, he now walked fast paced with his head down. Where he had once commanded, he now barely dared to ask.

"Malfoy?" Draco, now curled up against the wall in the furthest corner of the bathroom, didn't respond to the voice. He didn't think he could.

"I will wake up the entire castle if you so much as _reach_ for your wand, Potter." Myrtle's voice was as cold as her ghostly form, and Harry was taken aback by the use of his family name, which Myrtle had never used before. Not that Draco noticed that, he was too busy taking deep breaths and drying his face. A couple glamour charms did the rest, but when he tried to stand his legs gave out immediately. Feeling vulnerable, he stayed seated on the floor.

"I don't want to hurt him Myrtle. I want to help." Harry's voice was soft, and held something tender in it that made Draco unable to face him. He didn't want people to care enough to help him without asking. He thought the asking part was too essential. Besides, he shouldn't even need help. He should not have disappointed his father or joined the death eaters in the first place. He should be able to sort this out by himself.

"Good." Myrtle floated towards Harry on the other side of the bathroom. Her next words were lost to Draco, as he tried to push himself more straight up against the wall. He put his knees in a tight embrace, as a futile barrier that would in no way protect him from a second sectumsempra, and waited for Harry to walk down the row of toilets.

He didn't want the man to come, didn't want him or anyone else to see him in this state, but his exhausted body and whirling mind didn't allow for him to flee. He tried not to imagine how pathetic he must look, hiding in a bathroom corner, shaking because the nightmares he had brought upon himself left his sleep deprived. Crying because he couldn't get his shit together and feared that he never would.

"Malfoy?" Harry had approached him unnoticed during his ponderings and was now kneeling on his side. "Malfoy can you look at me?"

Malfoy couldn't.

"I'm not here to hurt you. I want to help." Draco clamped his hands around his elbows even tighter and turned his head away from Harry a bit. The fact that the man was there, talking to him, trying to help, was too confusing and he couldn't string a single coherent thought together. His every move was based on instinct.

"You don't have to talk to me, it's just..." Harry trailed off for a moment and bit his bottom lip so hard it would bruise. "You're burning up Malfoy. If you don't want to talk to me then at least let me take you to the hospital wing."

Draco blinked, slowly turning his head towards the other man. He opened his mouth, intending to speak, but instead he started a huge, forever lasting yawn. As fast as he could he clamped his hands over his face, his mind starting up just enough in order to let him think _I really hope my breath doesn't smell_.

"What is that?" Harry reached out for his hands after a sharp intake of breath. Almost tenderly he pulled them away from Draco's face, his emerald gaze fixed on his fingers. His ring and middle fingers on both hands were covered in white, ragged and hobly scars that Draco usually hid under glamour charms and long sleeves or gloves. Even his friends didn't know about them.

"A mistake." He whispered, doubting whether Harry would let him have his hands back if he tried to pull them away. He didn't know. He had no idea where he stood with the man.

"You did this to yourself?" Harry traced one of the scars with a careful finger. The movement send a spark through Draco's body and he became a bit more aware of things.

"I wasn't very patient when my father threw me out of the family. Those are the marks left from when I ripped off the family rings."

"Your father threw you out?" Harry was surprised, as he should be. Due to the money Blaise and Pansy sometimes send his way he didn’t look it, and he never talked about it to anyone, but he was broke and without a family. Had been since the end of July, the last day Lucius spent at the manor before that was confiscated and he was shipped away to a courtroom and then to Azkaban.

"I don't really talk about it." Draco whispered, closing his eyes to stop the world from spinning. “He said he didn’t want the family name to end in disappointment and a disgraced heir. That I’d let him down too often to still call him my father. The very idea that I was connected to him seemed to repulse him in the end. He believed that if he wasn’t there to groom me, I’d never get over my nature. I still don’t know what he meant by that last bit.”

Draco felt foolish talking about it. If anyone had the right to know these things it would be Pansy, Theo or Blaise. Not Harry. How could the boy wonder ever relate to such a thing?

But then, Harry did something so strange, so surprising, that Draco’s head snapped up so fast he lost his orientation for a moment and banged his head against the bathroom wall.

Harry was _kissing his fingers_. And not just a gentle lip brush, as some pureblood etiquettes described, but a firm, warm motion that lasted several seconds on both hands. As Harry kissed he didn’t break eye contact with Draco once. He didn’t even blink.

And after the last hand, he spoke. “You are not a disgrace, Draco. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

The moment that followed the other man’s words was deafening and filled with something greater than just silence. For the first time that evening Draco tried to focus, really focus, on the man kneeling at his side. The slight tremble in his hands, the intensity of his green eyes, the serious look on his face.

Draco looked at him, _saw_ him, and suddenly he understood. He didn’t know who, he didn’t know how or when, but somehow the boy wonder most definitely did relate to him. Knew the pain that was always in the corner of his mind no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.

Not just the absence of unconditionally loving parents, but the presence of an abusive one.

“I am so sorry.” In an impulse Draco reached out and pulled Harry close. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was sorry for. At that point he was not even sure anymore if he had interpreted Harry’s gaze right, but somehow that didn’t trouble him too much because holding Harry in his arms somehow felt _right_. As if he were meant to do it.

“It’s okay. It’s in the past.” Harry nearly choked on tears as he spoke. “For both of us.”

Draco tightened his grip on Harry as the other man hugged him back. He pressed his face in the crook of Harry’s neck and for the first time in his life he didn’t feel ashamed for the tears on his face, which his father had always called _girly_ , _signs of weakness_ and yet another reason why his son was an utter disappointment. For the first time since Lucius had gone, he understood that he never had to face that demon again. That he was allowed to think of his father as demon without having to fear his father, aunt or Voldemort himself penetrating his mind and discovering the memory. That, at least on that front, he was free.

They stayed like that for a long time, tightly wrapped in each other’s arms, terrified of facing the real worlds, at least in Draco’s case, but certain that right there and then they were both safe. Free. Happy, or whatever kind of emotion passed for it.

When Harry moved again, his legs asleep and his glasses askew, Draco didn’t move with him. He stayed right there in Harry’s hug, head on his shoulder, a slow rising and falling chest pressing lightly against the other man.

He’d fallen asleep.

“I’m not going to leave you alone, Draco.” The whispered words gently swayed in Draco’s blonde hair. “I’m going to help you.”

And then, very carefully, Harry lifted Draco’s sleeping form and carried him to the hospital wing. After that night things weren’t perfect, nights were still short and restless, tears were still shamed and arguments still fought out, but things were better. Impossible became manageable. Desperate became somewhat hopeful. Panicked became unease. Crying alone became crying together.

And slowly, as the years passed, Draco and Harry started feeling confident in saying that _all was well_.

Because it was.

And is.

 

The end.

 

**Author's Note:**

> okay so I hope it's not that bad. Was it bad? Idk, I didn't have time to properly edit due to school work... sorry
> 
> those who leave kudos or comments wil be loved and cherished forever!<3


End file.
